Open Source
01 Truths and myths about free software
There's no doubt that for decades free software has been one of the technologies that has produced the most controversy, especially because its philosophy about the way in which it's prepared and distributed is very different to what we are used to, and because its business model proves that an IT company can work differently to traditional software companies and be profitable.
01. TRUTHS AND MYTHS
In these circumstances, it's logical that there's a mix of conflicting claims about what free software actually is and why its development and use is characterized, either because of sheer ignorance, misunderstanding or the normal clean or dirty game of competition. But just because it's logical, it doesn't mean that the obligation to separate the grain from the chaff in respect to this technology lacks importance, even if it's just to guarantee a
minimum level of rigor and intellectual honesty in this debate: at the end of the day, the most important aspect is accurate information, that the public knows what the free software is actually offering before deciding if they want to use it, and that people in positions of responsibility in resource management are aware of all its possibilities in order to choose the most suitable product.
01. TRUTHS AND MYTHS
A definition of free software Free software is software that, after its acquisition, can be used, copied, analyzed, modified and redistributed by users with full freedom thanks to the open source. These conditions must always be met for it to be considered as such. But we mustn't confuse "free" with "free of charge", because whilst it keeps these characteristics, there's no problem with it being commercially distributed; i.e., freeware is not free software:
in general, it's distributed and used at no cost, although the first one depends on a specific license, but the program can never be altered. Neither must we confuse it with public domain software, which doesn't require any type of license to use because it belongs to everyone, whilst free software (always respecting its basic principles) works with different licenses, i.e., legal authorizations to use the programs: GNU GPL,
AGPL, type BDS or MPL and derivatives. GNU's General Public License, or GPL, maintains the copyright and allows it to be redistributed and modified provided that components from the same license are used; but if the open source is mixed with another form of license, the result will be the latter, which is used by approximately 60% of existing free software.
01. TRUTHS AND MYTHS
However, the Affero General Public License is the same as the first, but with an additional requisite: the software must be distributed if it is executed for services in a computer network. Meanwhile, the BSD type license, as its name indicates, is the license for software issued with Berkeley Software Distribution operating systems, derivatives of the Unix system with contributions from the University of California in Berkeley, and it maintains the copyright to waive the warrantee and correctly attribute authorship in the modifications made.
Furthermore, the MPL type license, i.e., Mozilla Public License, and its derivatives encourage collaboration, avoid virality of the GPL and a huge number are used in operating systems and other free software products. The owners of software copyrights with a copyleft license, for the free distribution of altered copies and versions, have the freedom to modify it with the first copyright and sell it with the license that best suits them, regardless of the distribution of the original program as free software.
01. TRUTHS AND MYTHS
The most common wrong ideas about free software It's pretty common to find these confusions among this technology, freeware and public domain, but it's also easy to come across a series of ideas that have nothing to do with the reality of free software.
For example, many people think that this technology doesn't respect the patents or copyrights, which doesn't make much sense because their developers don't use proprietary software, meaning that there
01. TRUTHS AND MYTHS
are no patents; it doesn't mean that they lose their rights as authors of the free software programs: it just means that they release the use of those they have developed under the principles of this technology. There are also people who blame their dynamic, that modifications of proprietary sources are patented, when free software has nothing to do with the legal umbrellas or loopholes that make this possible. Some even think that free software programs are pirated or have expired licenses, when their development is fully independent and uses what already exists in the same technology to work on new improved versions, but never plagiarizing external sources without the corresponding
permission from its author or waiting for a license to expire, since the developers of free software already have enough open sources to contribute with their contributions. The most surprising rumor about this technology, as pointed out by the international consultant in IT policies and communication, Ram贸n Ram贸n, is that "it's not a professional system", that it's made up of poor quality products, even amateurish, because the software passes through the hands of too many people and this is not a serious work process, not like that of the companies who manufacture and distribute proprietary software, supposedly, whose efficiency is general not questioned.
01. TRUTHS AND MYTHS
And what people who think that don't know, or are yet to understand, is that first of all, free software developers can be, and are, just as professional as proprietary software developers, and that, according to a study by the Universities Rey Juan Carlos and Oberta de Catalunya, almost half of these programmers also develop proprietary
software and can make a living from doing both, which is an image that disproves the perception of fanatics; due to the dynamics of free software development, which doesn't have access limitations to the source and has the possibility of immediately testing a program or operating system, the improvements and progress is faster.
01. TRUTHS AND MYTHS
Furthermore, as mentioned by David Ăšbeda, one of the managers at the Free Software Office at Miguel HernĂĄndez University, which was the most praised in the last Ranking of Free Software universities (RuSL), regarding production environments, Top500.org published a monograph on "the overwhelming dominance of GNU / Linux in supercomputers".
Ăšbeda also thinks that "the destructive criticisms about free software normally come from ignorance", criticisms which give rise to the idea that free software is bad for the progress of the IT market, and they tend to add that, since it's free, it doesn't generate economic movement, which puts an end to innovation and results in the disappearance of small developer companies. In reality, if many minds think more and better than just a few, it's not unreasonable to think that many free software developers can work more and better than just a few proprietary software developers, and if they can make a living from it, as is the case with 65% of free software developers, this
technology does strengthen the market. And given that it doesn't have to be free of charge since the open and modifiable source doesn't take away from the fact that systems, programs and applications can be sold, such as charging for customer support, distribution and user tutorials, it all generates an interesting economic movement.
01. TRUTHS AND MYTHS
Therefore, in no way does it kill the innovative drive, given the exponential growth dynamic of the open development, in which the only barriers are the limits of individual creativity. And being aware that 90% of free software developed in the world is done to order, we know that a large number of developer companies remain active thanks to this. What's more, the Linux Foundation calculates that the financial value of the kernel of its platform is around 2.2 billion euros. Juan Juliรกn Merelo, director of the Free Software Office at the University of Granada, which is the most active in Spain according to RuSL, says that the greatest myth in recent times about this technology is "that it doesn't have customer support". The truth is that it can be "bought, in general, for any free software tool, from the Apache or nginx servers to databases such as PostgreSQL or complete systems such as Drupal. The argument is precisely the opposite: with proprietary software, you only have support from the company who made it or its preferred partners. With free software, SMEs, local companies or the self-employed who have experience can also provide support".
01. TRUTHS AND MYTHS
It's also worth mentioning the idea that free software programs are incompatible with proprietary operating systems, when the truth is quite the opposite, since the dissemination of this technology would be much less, or that it's not valid for critical systems with a strategic importance, because they're not secure, when the open source guarantees that anyone can check the security of all programs and, as Ram贸n Ram贸n adds, the fact that the New York Stock Exchange will be migrating to the Linux operating system is a display of the trust that can be put in it.
Meanwhile, Ram贸n comments that one of the most popular myths about free software, especially in the offices of senior government officials, is that this technology "is only for rich countries or for times of economic prosperity and overspending". Some think that in actual fact, the time to save is during times of prosperity, which is when there is capital to do so.
01. TRUTHS AND MYTHS
The occurrence pointed out by Ram贸n is based on the misconception that the use of free software is more expensive than proprietary software, when the savings from not having to pay for licenses significantly reduces the user cost. Nevertheless, despite these frequent misconceptions which, as I say, don't conform to the technological reality, according to a report about the Evaluation of Free Software in society, by
PortalProgramas.com with surveys in 16 Spanish speaking countries and in which 1,500 people took part, 70% of people surveyed have used or use free software programs on a daily basis and 80% said that they trust this technology. So, based on this information, it seems that rigor and intellectual honesty are winning the war in the debate about free software.
70
%
of people surveyed Have used or use free software programs
02 The industrious history of free software
It's thought that free software emerged in the '80s from a need to produce it, faced with the overwhelming majority of proprietary software.
02. THE INDUSTRIOUS HISTORY
However, although this is correct, the development of the first computers and IT programs was collaborative, high influenced by the academic dynamic. In fact, at the end of the '50s and during the '60s, almost all software was produced by academics and groups of researchers who worked together, and groups of users distributed the operating systems and programs, whose source could be modified to make changes or improve it. Therefore, there were certain software communities that can be compared with the current free software communities long before it became popular, and even before the
conceptualization of this technology. Richard Stallman, a New York programmer who founded the movement for free software, says there was a community that shared IT programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was a hacker at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, years before the movement began.
02. THE INDUSTRIOUS HISTORY
However, the concept of "open source", on which free software is based, and the practice of freely sharing technological information comes from way back, long before IT existed, and from another technical field: the automobile sector. Following a business war related with the patent of George Selden's twostroke gasoline engine, which involved another group of independent manufacturers which included Henry Ford, a new association from the sector reached an agreement to establish a multiple license for all automobile manufacturers in the United States, according to which, all technological patents developed would be shared between them without any kind of transaction, i.e., openly.
02. THE INDUSTRIOUS HISTORY
At the end of the '70s and the beginning of the '80s, by means of trademarks, copyrights and leasing, the companies that sold computers and software began to charge for licenses, thus restricting the development of this technology. The letter that Bill Gates, the hugely famous cofounder of the software company Microsoft, wrote to IT development enthusiasts in 1976 was unforgettable. Which not only reveals the change in trend toward privatization that was going to happen in the following years, but his own misunderstanding of the collaborative development model.
“
As most of you amateurs know, most of you steal the software you use. Hardware must be paid for, but software is to be shared. Who cares if the people who worked on it were paid or not?
“
From proprietary to free software
Bill Gates
02. THE INDUSTRIOUS HISTORY
He had to wait until September 1983 for Richard Stallman to tell the Usenet news groups, the well known and veteran internet discussion group generated by Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis in 1979, that he was planning on creating a completely free operating system, without restrictions for its use, modifications and distribution, which was known as the GNU project. The story goes that a printer at MIT, that was impossible to fix because it didn't have the open source, may have inspired Stallman for the project, or the encounter he had with Symbolics, Inc regarding his Lisp Machine, which executes programs in this language, and MIT accessing its updates.
In 1985, the GNU Manifesto was published, in which Stallman explained his motivations to develop an alternative to Unix, a pretty old operating system from the AT&T Bell laboratories, and he founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which "is dedicated to eliminating the restrictions on copying, redistributing, understanding and modifying computer programs. With this purpose, it promotes the development and use of free software in all areas of computing, but very specifically, helping to develop the GNU operating system". A definition of free software was published in February 1986, and the copyleft concept (not the original term) that
02. THE INDUSTRIOUS HISTORY
Stallman dreamed up was included in the GLP in 1989 and was updated in 1991. That same year, the software engineer Linus Torvalds, born in Finland and a US national, released the Linux kernel to be freely modified; and in 1992, he licensed a new version under the terms of the GPL, providing us with a free, complete and efficient operating system, the GNU/Linux. To do so, he based it on the one created by New Yorker Andrew Tanenbaum, professor of computer sciences at the Free University of Amsterdam, and on some tools developed by the GNU project.
But, as happens in the best of families, controversy arose in the free software community about the name of the operating system that Torvalds had brought about: on the one hand, members of the GNU project asked for this system to be called GNU/Linux because most of them that are based on the Linux kernel derive from the GNU system, whose development started several years before Torvalds presented his kernel; meanwhile, those who decided on the simple name of Linux preferred it because it was more recognizable and practical and gave it more recognition and therefore, better acceptance.
02. THE INDUSTRIOUS HISTORY
And that wasn't the only controversy in the free software environment. We must remember that, following the publication of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, a book by the historian of the hacker culture, Eric Raymond, about the controversy and the free software that resulted in the company Netscape releasing its internet suite,
today better known as Firefox and Thunderbird, Raymond, Torvalds and other people from that world founded the Open Source Initiative in 1998 with the intention of transferring the free software philosophy to the commercial environment, highlighting the business potential of sharing open source. The reasoning behind this decision was that
the activism of the FSF didn't attract companies such as Netscape, but the Foundation and Stallman vigorously protested against the Initiative because they considered that it hid the social values of free software and the emphasis on the freedom of computer users, although they also protested against proprietary software.
02. THE INDUSTRIOUS HISTORY
The milestones of free software When Juan Julián Merelo was asked what moment or moments in the history of free software he considered to be the most relevant, the first word that left his mouth was "Afú!", an expression from Granada that sometimes indicates weariness and other times difficulty: it's not an easy task to pick specific times from all those that have paved the way for the evolution of this technology. In the end, he decided on when Torvalds released Git in 2005, a version control software application based on the BitKeeper proprietary software and the Monotone free software, and its maintenance for when there is a high number of open source files, thus guaranteeing its efficiency and security. "Nowadays", says Merelo, "free software can't be understood without this tool, which fully dominates the outlook of the creation, production and distribution of software”.
02. THE INDUSTRIOUS HISTORY
Ram贸n Ram贸n looked out for themselves and, although obvious like Stallman's encouragement for this technology to flourish, they chose the decision of the Autonomous Community of Extremadura to choose free software in all its schools from the year 2000, and in three years it was the region with the most computers per student in the whole world, which firstly ran with GNU/Linux and then from 2002 with Linux, an operating system in Spanish
developed and supported by the Community itself, which now, it seems, is going to be relegated in favor of Microsoft. It argues that it's the system most used by teachers in their homes, i.e., they're absurdly transferring a personal choice to public education, and Vocational Training, special education centers, conservatory and Fine Arts "don't want OpenOffice because they can't use it" and they ordered Office, which is improbable because OpenOffice is very similar to the other word processor and is also perfectly compatible with Windows.
02. THE INDUSTRIOUS HISTORY
David Ăšbeda thinks, without a doubt, that there are very significant milestones in the field of free software that have marked a before and an after; for example, when Torvalds began the development and maintenance of the Linux kernel. "However", he points out, "I think that the most important time in the history of free software occurred when a group of people were able to channel all the collaborative capacity and mobilize a very large number of people for a single purpose, which was releasing all their know-how [basic knowledge as a way of transferring technology] to the community.
That was the seed". He adds that the really remarkable thing "is that it's still here with the passing of time, meaning that this collaborative capacity is just starting to get established, creating stronger ties and participating in politics to take this philosophy [of free software] even further. This makes me think that it's a process that's just getting started". I hope he's right.
03 Open Source infographic
With Open Source you can read, modify and redistribute a program's source code, as well as evolve, develop and improve it. Users adapt it to suit their needs, correct their mistakes and consequently create better software.
03. OPEN SOURCE INFOGRAPHIC
CHRONOLOGY
1955 Sharing User Group With the express purpose of facilitating the exchange of open source software with IBM source code.
During the '60s and '70s, UNIX is created within and through Bell Labs, MIT and General Electric.
1950 IBM source code IBM releases the source code of its operating systems.
Bill Gates expressed his dismay at the wide exchange of Altair BASIC open source software.
03. OPEN SOURCE INFOGRAPHIC
1983 GNU Project Richard Stallman begins the Free Software Movement, with the founding of the GNU project.
1980
1985
Source BBS
Free Software for everyone
Available at Bulletin Board Systems. Source code features in the free software movement.
RMS founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF). FSF brings the open source initiative.
03. OPEN SOURCE INFOGRAPHIC
GNU has the initial nucleus and compiler required to develop the program.
1987
1991
GNU Provides
Minix
GNU develops an assembler, a portable optimizing C compiler (GSS), an editor (GNU Emacs) and Unix utilities.
Linus Torvalds publishes a message on Usenet comp.os.minix about the new Unix kernel (Linux) that he has developed.
03. OPEN SOURCE INFOGRAPHIC
1998 C贸digo Abierto Netscape announces that it will release the source code for Navigator. Sun Microsystems and Adaptec join Linux International. Oracle and Informix announce that they will connect their databases to GNU/Linux.
1993
1998
USL v. BSDi
Open Source
After it was installed USL v. BSDi, FreeBSD and NetBSD are released as free software.
The term open source is coined and during the following week Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond launch opensource.org
According to NT Applications, Linux OS's are used in nearly 18% of all web clients.
03. OPEN SOURCE INFOGRAPHIC
2000 Codificaci贸n Many coding languages are created to meet demand.
1999
2005
Minix
Git
LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. Apple releases Darwin under open source license.
Linus Torvalds begins working on his own DVCS-Git.
03. OPEN SOURCE INFOGRAPHIC
2008/2014 Movil OS Android, Chrome, Chromium OS appears and Oracle sues Google.
2008
2015
GitHub
Apple announces Swift 2 under open source license
GitHub becomes the most popular DVCS hosting site with over 3.4 million users.
03. OPEN SOURCE INFOGRAPHIC
PUBLIC SOFTWARE MODELS Depending on the rights that each author reserves for their work:
Public Domain
Open Source
(free)
FreeWare Shareware Copyright
Closed source
COMMERCIAL SOFTWARE
Strong robust Permissive
Public source Copyleft
PUBLIC SOFTWARE
Weak robust
03. OPEN SOURCE INFOGRAPHIC
TYPES OF LICENSE
Copyright •
COMMERCIAL Closed source
Binary code. • Use according to the license terms. • Negotiable terms. • Royalty payments.
- EULA - Microsoft Reference Source
FOSS
Strong robust copyleft
PUBLIC SOURCE Open source
•
- GPL 2 / GPL 3 - AGPL - CC - Berkely DB - EUPL
Derived from open source. • Imposes distribution and hosting obligations. Weak robust copyleft Modify open source. • Imposes distribution and hosting obligations. •
Permissive copyleft •
PUBLIC DOMAIN Open source
No distribution and hosting obligations.
With no obligations • •
Rights released by the author. Expired rights.
- LGPL 2.1/3 - MPL 1/2 - CPL - Artistic License 2 - Microsoft Public - BSD 2/3 - MIT/X11 - Apache Foundation - Zlib/libping - Academic Free - The unilicense - CC0 - WTFPL
04 Big Data and Open Source as innovation engines
Open source has already been mentioned as a capital element in free software development, and it's been made clear that it's technology that is developed, modified and distributed freely, focusing its theory around the practical advantages of this dynamic rather than the ethics of freedom.
04. BIG DATA AND OPEN SOURCE
However, it's the Big Data concept that complements open source, and not just for the faster expansion of technological development, but also for the freedom to access information that, in other cases, favors this development. Both elements form part of open innovation, a notion coined by American professor Henry Chesbrough, organizational theorist, in his book Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology, which was published in 2003 and whose ideas about how technology should be managed and used have been very influential, increasing the public impact of free software and
open source. Chesbrough clarifies that we mustn't confuse innovation with invention: the second is the creation of something new without it having to result in financial profit; on the other hand, innovation is the application of the inventions, precisely to generate said profit, i.e., it involves its introduction on the market. And open innovation is when companies look for new technologies, exceeding the scope of their own organization and collaborating with external partners, which brings together internal and external knowledge to complete strategic research and development, or R&D, projects and improve their efficiency.
04. BIG DATA AND OPEN SOURCE
However, in honor of the truth, it's important to note that the use of external knowledge of "the technological gatekeepers" was already theorized by Thomas Allen, an MIT professor in the '70s who, like Eric von Hippel, another teacher at MIT, in the '80s identified advanced users as a key resource for ground breaking innovations.
©JotDown
“
Business creativity is what turns the economic wheel, and every limit put on this creativity just puts another stick in the wheel
“
This dynamic, which spurs the flow of knowledge, also means that risks and benefits are better distributed with external partners, and in the companies themselves, it results in a higher level of participation from all employees; and if we consider the wisdom of the influential publicist Lluís Bassat when he said that "business creativity is what turns the economic wheel, and every limit put on this creativity just puts another stick in the wheel", open innovation is a clear drive for business creativity, and therefore, for development itself.
Luís Bassat
04. BIG DATA AND OPEN SOURCE
Innovation with Open Source The current technological world has evolved in such a way, and so quickly, that its complexity makes it practically impossible for one organization, on its own, to monopolize talent, innovation and results. We must forget about the development models in which a company executes all aspects of its technological products; they're no longer optimum, and much less viable; they're obsolete. The present and the future of technology can be found in collaboration, precisely that on which free software is based, which is the best example of
open innovation around, although the obtaining and granting process for software patent licenses, which has nothing free about it, also fits in with Chesbrough's open innovation thesis, because his samples of technological exchange are largely based on patentable methods and related licenses which are paid to external organizations.
In any case, hackathons, which are large gatherings of programmers organized to develop free software such as AngelHack, which is the most important free software in the world, is an example of the
collaborative trend in technological production. Meanwhile, open source is playing an important role in the cloud and in the mobile device environment, becoming a source of innovative solutions for user needs.
04. BIG DATA Y OPEN SOURCE COMO 04. MOTORES BIG DATA AND DE LAOPEN INNOVACIĂ“N SOURCE
Thousands of developers take part in piles of different open source projects which are accelerating technological innovation, and not just the numerous companies, who spent many years trying protecting their sources from prying eyes, are now changing to open source, it's also actively intervening in the development process. The managers of these companies, such as NoSQL Couchbase, Cloudera Inc. and the great Red Hat, agree that the accumulation of the collaborative procedure speeds up the process of achieving the key features of the
ecosystems that need it to innovate, and thus, open source generally results in better products than the proprietary alternatives, and faster at that; and that no prominent software infrastructure as a platform has emerged in the last decade with the dynamics of the private source, which is a huge competitive disadvantage that kills off business innovation.
04. BIG DATA Y OPEN SOURCE COMO 04. MOTORES BIG DATA AND DE LAOPEN INNOVACIĂ“N SOURCE
Companies such as Google, which is almost fully based on open source, Facebook, which created the NoSL database, and Netflix, realized that software providers could no longer meet their needs, so they began to develop their own software, and providers' clients provided themselves. Following the idea that the rest of the world has much more to gain with their inventions,
users of open source technology are the ones driving its development: the need for software to be very specialized according to the purposes of each company pushes them toward open source, because they have many more experts who are able to resolve their problems.
The new Big Data world The concept of Big Data gives a somewhat vague description of a valuable and tricky set of practices, techniques, ethical issues and results concerning the storage of mass information, the IT systems that accumulate data on a large scale and the formulas that are used to find recurring patterns among the immensity data.
04. BIG DATA Y OPEN SOURCE COMO 04. MOTORES BIG DATA AND DE LAOPEN INNOVACIĂ“N SOURCE
These systems, of course, form part of the information and communications technologies, ICT, which are currently having a huge impact because data processing in large and complex fields was unthinkable until recently. A report by the analyst Doug Laney for Gartner in 2001 is usually mentioned in this topic, which talks about the features of big data such as volume (the large amount of data available to be analyzed), speed (with which data collection occurs) and variety (due to the different data source formats).
Open platforms' need for big data is based on maintaining innovation that draws on the uninterrupted collection of reliable information, which not only required accurate processing technology, but also fast and easy access to the instruments for intuitively exploring new analysis proposals without any barriers: let's not forget how bad
limitations are for business creativity. So these platforms need to be transparent, integrative, collaborative, flexible and fast, and the most used platforms nowadays generally fulfill these requirements: Data Analytics, Hadoop & NoSQL, Data Science, Data & the Cloud, Machine Learning, Data Architecture, etc.
04. BIG DATA Y OPEN SOURCE COMO 04. MOTORES BIG DATA AND DE LAOPEN INNOVACIĂ“N SOURCE
There's no doubt that one of the major sources of information for big data analysis are social networks, but only for learning about the behavior and interests of the users, which is something that all companies who want to sell them their products yearn to know. That's what social media mining (SMM) is for, which is "the process for extracting, storing, representing, viewing and analyzing mass data generated by users to discover significant patterns based on social interactions on the internet", as defined by a recent study by the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2015.
This process has an essential tool, APIs, which are application programming interfaces that establish connections using a permission authentication and authorization mechanism which implements the oAuth (open Authentication) protocol, with which the user grants a third party, service provider or the application itself to access their data, presumably to use it for their commercial interests.
04. BIG DATA Y OPEN SOURCE COMO 04. MOTORES BIG DATA AND DE LAOPEN INNOVACIĂ“N SOURCE
The most popular social media APIs are those of Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. The most flexible is the Twitter API, for both obtaining information thanks to it being so public, and because it makes it possible to perform a large number of social media actions, using OR, AND and NOT logical operators in their searches, which are also included in specific accounts. Despite the fact that Facebook holds much more information on its users that isn't public, it's very useful for its own advertising API and it doesn't perform searches with logical operators or on specific accounts. YouTube is pretty
restrictive on the number of videos provided by its searches, whose logical operators, AND and OR aren't optimized, and the access token needs to be renewed every so often. And Instagram is the most restrictive of all, as it doesn't allow new images to be published or comments made, it's only possible to look at the information, without a search with local operators and only using valid tags to achieve effective results. So it seems that there is still much to be improved in this area.
Arduino and Raspberry Pi dominate open hardware but there are increasingly better alternatives There are currently two major transatlantic companies in the open-source hardware market.
05
05. ARDUINO AND RASPBERRY PI
Arduino and Raspberry Pi are used by project developers worldwide in fields such as electronics, the automotive industry, robotics, 3D printing and that known as the Internet of Things, a business that could reach a volume of 25 billion euros by 2020; however, other dealers already have powerful alternative to both giants.
ENTRY LEVEL ENHANCED FEATURES
Arduino Uno
Arduino Pro
Arduino Pro Mini
Arduino Micro
Arduino Starter Kit
Arduino Basic Kit
Arduino Motor Shield
Arduino Nano
Arduino Mega
Arduino Zero
Arduino Due
Arduino Proto Shield
Arduino Ethernet Shield
Arduino GSM Shield
Arduino Wifi Shield 101
INTERNET OF THINGS
Arduino YĂşn
WEARABLE
Arduino Gemma
3D PRINTING
Arduino is the quintessential King of open-source hardware. There are numerous types of motherboards for different types of development projects. From robotics, 3D printing, the Internet of Things, wearables or smart textiles. All models can be viewed on the Arduino website: totaling more than 20 different products. Each has its own processor, RAM, USB ports, etc.
Arduino Lilypad
Arduino Lilypad Simple Arduino Lilypad USB
Materia 101 BOARD
MODULES
SHIELDS
KITS
COMING NEXT
05. ARDUINO AND RASPBERRY PI
There are many interesting projects with Arduino: development of robots, instruments such as a xylophone, sweet vending machines, calculators, cameras, thermometers, and so on. This hardware consisting of a motherboard with a microcontroller and its own development environment (Proccessing/Wiring programming language and a boot loader) is undoubtedly the most solid alternative development under patent. Its use is universal.
Raspberry Pi has two motherboard models, A and B, and two revised models, A+ and B+. Model A has 256 MB SDRAM, a USB port, HDMI output, and an SD memory card. It does not have a second USB port or Ethernet connection to the LAN. The improved A+ model, released in November 2014, still has a single USB port, 256 MB SDRAM and no Ethernet connection, but it is smaller in size than the models that are 65 mm in length.
05. ARDUINO AND RASPBERRY PI
The Raspberry Pi Model B was the high-end board until July 2014. It has two USB ports and 512 MB SDRAM. It also has an Ethernet port to connect to the LAN. Its improved model, the B+, was launched on that date with some important improvements: more power thanks to a new supply system, a microSD card, 3.5-mm video and audio jack and 5V current limiter for HDMI output.
See video
There are an enormous amount of projects with this type of board: some developers have used Raspberry Pi to design a universal translator, a mini laptop, a compact camera, a digital radio and an arcade machine. At websites such as Instructables you can find hundreds of ‘Do It Yourself’ developments. It's become a fever.
05. ARDUINO AND RASPBERRY PI
Competitors in the marketplace BEAGLEBONE, a minicomputer costing $89 BeagleBone is one of the strongest market alternatives to Arduino and Raspberry Pi. At present it has four products on the market: BeagleBone, BeagleBone Black, BeagleBoard-xM and BeagleBoard. They are all motherboards with their own processor, RAM, microSD card reader, power supply and connection port for peripherals.
BeagleBone has a 720 MHz ARM Cortex A8 AM3358 microprocessor, with 256 MB DDR2 RAM, 3D graphics accelerator, Ethernet connection to the LAN, a reader of microSD cards up to 4 GB and a USB 2.0 port. It is a Linux microcomputer that runs on Android 4.0 or Ubuntu. It's compatible with the Cloud9 Integrated Development Environment,
which runs Node.js. The Bonescript library is also included, based on Node.js, which offers several similar functions to Arduino to interact with the hardware. The classic BeagleBone motherboard is priced at $89.
05. ARDUINO AND RASPBERRY PI
The specifications of the other boards are available in this table: BEAGLEBONE BLACK
BEAGLEBONE
BEAGLEBOARD-xM
BEAGLEBOARD
PROCESSOR
AM3358 ARM Cortex-A8
AM3358 ARM Cortex-A8
DM3730 ARM Cortex-A8
OMAP3530 ARM Cortex-A8
MAXIMUM PROCESSOR SPEDD
1GHz
720MHz
1GHz
720MHz
ANALOG PINS
7
7
0
0
DIGITAL PINS
65 (3.3V)
65 (3.3V)
53 (1.8V)
24 (1.8V)
256MB DDR2 (400MHz x 16), microSD card slot
512MB LPDDR (333MHz x 32), microSD card slot
256MB LPDDR (333MHz x 32), SD card slot
HS USB 2.0 Client Port, LS/FS/HS USB 2.0 Host Port
4 Port, LS/FS/HS USB Hub, HS USB 2.0 OTG Port
USB HS Host Port, HS USB 2.0 OTG Port
MEMORY
USB
512MB DDR3 (800MHz x 16), 2GB (4GB on Rev C) onboard storage using eMMC, microSD card slot HS USB 2.0 Client Port, LS/FS/HS USB 2.0 Host Port
05. ARDUINO AND RASPBERRY PI
VIDEO
microHDMI, cape add-ons
cape add-ons
DVI-D (via HDMI connectors), S-Video
DVI-D (via HDMI connectors), S-Video
AUDIO
microHDMI, cape add-ons
cape add-ons
3.5mm stereo jack
3.5mm stereo jack
McBSP, DSS, 12C, UART, LCD, McSPI, PWM, JTAG, Camera Interface
McBSP, DSS, 12C, UART, McSPI, PWM, JTAG
$149
$125
SUPPORTED INTERFACES
PRICE
4x UART, 8x PWM LCD, GPMC, MMC1, 2x SPI, 2x 12C, A/D Converter, 2xCAN Bus, 4 Timers
$49
4x UART, 8x PWM LCD, GPMC, MMC1, 2x SPI, 2x 12C, A/D Converter, 2xCAN Bus, 4 Timers, FTDI USB to Serial, JTAG via USB $89
As BeagleBone works with Linux, any developer can create their own software in a variety of languages: C, C++, Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, and Javascript. In addition, BeagleBone has a community of programmers that always shares tutorials, examples, videos and documentation that may serve as a guide to perform developments with the boards.
See video
05. ARDUINO AND RASPBERRY PI
MINNOWBOARD AND MINNOWBOARD MAX, Intel low-cost option MinnowBoard may be the closest thing to Arduino and Raspberry Pi on the market, but instead of containing an ARM microprocessor, it is an Intel Atom, specifically an E3825 (dual-core, 1.33 GHz) microprocessor. Compared with Arduino or Raspberry Pi boards, the leap in performance is high. The file transfer speed is greater. Other specifications: it has 2 GB DD3R RAM, 8 MB flash memory, an integrated Intel HD Graphics card, Ethernet
connection to the LAN an RJ45 port, microHDMI video output, a microSD card reader and two USB ports, one 2.0 and another 3.0. Its power supply: 5V, 2.5A connector. The motherboard runs on Debian operating systems, Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 and Android 4.4. It is also compatible with the Yocto Project, which provides open source tools to help developers to customize their own Linux distribution for any
hardware. It's pricey: the MinnowBoard MAX costs $139. MinnowBoards are manufactured by CircuitCo, a company that manufactures customized microprocessor based in Richardson, Texas.
05. ARDUINO AND RASPBERRY PI
NANODE, test the Internet of Things Nanode is an open-source motherboard used by developers to experiment with the Internet of Things. Nanode allows connection to the Internet through a browser or through an open-data API such as Cosm. It can be used to detect environmental data such as temperature, air quality and meteorological elements through sensors. It was developed by Ken Boak,
See video
within London Hackspace, which is a developer community where ideas and tools are shared. A well-known example of use was the experiment conducted by Nat Morris, who was able to feed his dog completely remotely through being connected to the Twitter social network.
05. ARDUINO AND RASPBERRY PI
CUBIEBOARD, great value Four different models of this open-source motherboard have been released so far, the Cubieboard1 up to the Cubieboard4, which is the latest model launched to the market. Right now there is a new prototype, the Cubieboard5, which will soon start to be distributed. For the more advanced model, the Cubieboard4 or CC-A80 board includes four ARM Cortex A15 processors plus four ARM Cortex A7 processors with
GPU PowerVR G6230. It is obviously one of the most powerful open-source motherboards. It also has an Ethernet connection to the LAN, two wireless connections (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0), a USB 3.0 port, 2GB of RAM and 8GB storage memory. Supported operating systems with Cubieboard are Android, Debian and Ubuntu. Currently there are several different
vendors: eBay, Aliexpress, rOck.me, eleduino, among others. Cubieboard provides the full list. Prices range from 40 euros for the Cubieboard1 up to 110 euros for the Cubierboard4.
05. ARDUINO AND RASPBERRY PI
UDOO NEO, the potent mix of Arduino and Raspberri Pi UDOO Neo is open-source and low-cost hardware for Android and Linux. It has a 1 GHz ARM Cortex A9 processor, with an additional 166 MHz Cortex M4 processor. It also has Bluetooth 4.0 and an Ethernet connection. It also has 1 GB or 512 MB (basic version) DDR3 RAM, an integrated 3D graphic controller and HDMI output.
Another defining characteristic of UDOO Neo is the sensor that combines an accelerometer, magnetometer and gyroscope, which are three essential elements for projects in fields such as robotics, 3D printing or drones. There are many examples of projects with UDOO: robots, smart mini cars, virtual orchestra, coffee machines in the Internet of Things‌ They're all here.
UDOO Neo is fully compatible with Arduino board accessories. The different hardware models range from 73 euros for the basic model to 99 for the most powerful. They can be bought from UDOO's own site.
06 The most used free software tools for publishing content
We could ask ourselves what would happen to websites without content management systems, or CMS, which are IT programs that activate a support structure or framework to develop and administer different levels of accessible content for different types of users, even with different administrators.
06. THE MOST USED FREE SOFTWARE TOOLS
They are based on an interface that has one or more databases in which the website's content is stored, which could be processed independently from the design, meaning that a new format doesn't have to be established for the content each time the design is changed.
Websites are essential for most companies and they are always conveniently accompanied by promotion on social networks, which is why CMS are of vital importance for them: they're what enable them to show the world their best side.
Content management is a super mix of design, development, information architecture, integration with social networks, marketing and particularly interest for achieving the best user experience. CMS have come a long way over the last three decades, whilst the way in which users comprise, administer and deliver content remains stable.
06. THE MOST USED FREE SOFTWARE TOOLS
Developers use content management systems to offer unique digital experiences with very specific tools, and the thing that obviously accelerated the innovation of the CMS was the development of open source:
developers speed up their work, which they can also control more, without waiting for license codes from providers and they can test a tool before buying it; the customization and expansion of a CMS stands out, connecting it
with different applications, which have improved their interfaces to make the use more attractive; and the processes and tools for the development have been pleasantly simplified, with resources such as the collaborative platform for GitHub free software projects, automation, integration, streamlined encoding, testing and deployment, as well as the execution of new systems and virtualization. Having said this, it's indisputable that since developers can work faster and more efficiently thanks to open source, it's good for businesses.
06. THE MOST USED FREE SOFTWARE TOOLS
A little background about CMS Not many people remember or are aware of the arduous work that went into designing, developing and maintaining a website before CMS: the manual conversion of documents to HTML and any direct correction of the files, one by one, was very painstaking. But since it's not true that things were always better back in the day, the work dynamic changed radically when the first content management systems
were invigorated with advances in HTML, PHP and the internet thanks to the progressive increase in companies and institutions that publish a large amount of content on the internet and demand continuous updates or the possibility of being able to personalize their websites. They grew in number extremely quickly during the '90s, and individuals also wanted to share their own content. The CMSs that we know today arose from this desire and need.
06. THE MOST USED FREE SOFTWARE TOOLS
The pioneering CNET, a technological news website, first used its system in 1995 to administer documents and publications and the company that developed it, Vignette. In 1999, Xpedio was presented by IntraNet Solutions, and it's considered to be the first truly complete CMS. Two years later we were introduced to Movable Type, a system for publishing blogs produced by Six Apart; at the same time, the very young SilverStripe Limited launched SilverStripe and the well know Drupal was born, which later changed to open source.
The technology process for internet users, who were interacting in blogs and social networks in larger and larger numbers and with increasing skill, resulted in specialization and in the proposal to dispatch more friendly products: Google purchased Blogger in 2003,
which Prya Labs had developed in 1998; the notorious and unique Wordpress came about in 2004, the less known Made Simple and Textpattern months later, and in September 2005, the famous Joomla.
06. THE MOST USED FREE SOFTWARE TOOLS
The best in content management The best known CMS are Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal. All three are based on the PHP programming language and on the MySQL database management system, and they have heaps of options for developers and users. But, at the time of choosing one of these platforms, the best thing is to know how complex they could be to install, whether the templates and accessories, extensions and plugins they have are sufficient for our needs, are easy to use, customization and updates, etc.
During the installation of Joomla, and unlike with Wordpress and Drupal, the user needs to enter the name of the database, can check the configuration before the process completes and choose whether their website will go online straight after. The installation program also requires that the user deletes its source folder once completed. This platform doesn't provide information about the number of templates or themes it has, but it does say that it has more than 7200 plugins. It's easy to get lost on its administration page, with so many
06. THE MOST USED FREE SOFTWARE TOOLS
dropdown, vertical and horizontal menus that are full of options; it's interface is elegant in comparison with that of Drupal, for example, and it's aimed at a more thorough control. It can be updated from the server, but it's not always possible to use this method, so there is an option to select an update file and install it manually. Lastly, another interesting aspect is the possibility of being able to edit the template without being connected. A lot of people still think that Drupal is a platform that's especially difficult to install and even to use, but that's no longer the case, because the executives finally decided to commit themselves to simplicity in all areas. Now, after downloading and decompressing the files and placing them in the server's root folder, the software does its job.
However, users need to create a database and, as with Joomla, specify the name and password. It currently has more than 1,300 themes and around 17,400 free modules, which is what plugins are called in this platform. Furthermore, the user interface is very simple, with a tool bar at the top that contains the important aspects of the site, including a list of publications and comments, and the other links in the menu are very intuitive.
06. THE MOST USED FREE SOFTWARE TOOLS
But lo and behold, the only way to update any element of Drupal is manually, which includes a certain risk, up to the point that if it doesn't work, the website could be totally lost, which makes it a good idea to ask for help from experts if the user isn't an expert. Neither does it have any support to customize the theme, so a module needs to be installed to customize it without connection.
Unlike Drupal, Wordpress is known for being the easiest CMS to use out of the three, and this fame is well deserved. It needs the same information as Drupal and Joomla, but it doesn't seem like it: the config.php file is created with all the data needed and then the user just has to start the installation. The Wordpress community makes their presence clear with more than 2000 themes and over 39,200 plugins available. The interface is very straight forward, even for beginners, given that Joomla and Drupal use more technical language.
06. THE MOST USED FREE SOFTWARE TOOLS
Wordpress also has online updates and alerts any time there is a pending update, although the manual route is still an option. One of the most attractive features is the online editing of files, where users can customize their template and even the plugins, editing them directly. The truth is that although Joomla is more interesting in the sense that all the controls make it possible for users to administer their website to a greater extent. Simplicity is the leading lady of software.
That's where Wordpress' huge popularity comes from compared to the other two platforms, and because if users discover an error in this CMS, or any other problem, they can be sure that the bustling community of developers behind it will get straight to work to find a solution. Maybe I exaggerated with the speed, but experience has shown that they won't stop until they've solved the problem.
07 Free software
for handling customer relationships For any company, taking care with the service they give their customer base and storing all the information about them, which can be useful for optimizing this service and persuading them to use their products, is a monumental task.
07. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
That's why, due to this need, the software was developed to provide a solution: the CRMs, IT support systems for managing relationships with customers, for sales and marketing, that administer a data warehouse of the company's sales and customers. But a CRM system is not just a list of contacts with a record of their transactions with the company. Many of these systems are able to connect with financial advisors and accountants to help with the monitoring of income and expenditure, and they favor an analysis that could result in the company better predicting what their customers will need in the future.
In their book Managing Customer Relationships: A Strategic Framework, business consultants Don Pepper and Martha Rogers say that "a company that's fully committed to its customers is a company that uses information to obtain a competitive advantage and achieve growth and profitability. In its most generalized form, CRM can be considered as simply a set of practices designed to put a company in much closer contact with its customers. And therefore, learn more about each one, with the broader aim of each of them being more valuable, increasing the value of the company". We mustn't lose
sight of competitive advantage, because if we add that with what is already provided by the way companies work with free software and open source in the CRM development, they obtain a much greater advantage, and all they need is an internet server, a database and a browser.
07. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
How CRM has evolved The software that makes businesses happy has been around for decades. The companies who revolutionized IT were founded in the '70s: Microsoft in 1975, Apple in 1976, and Oracle, which was the first company to develop business software, in 1977. The first CRM products appeared in the '80s: in 1986, Mike Muhney and Pat Sullivan created ACT, or Automate Contact Tracking, a contact manager to replace rolodexes in SMEs, which is now one of the most widely used in the world with a proprietary license; and in 1989, Jon Ferrara developed one of the first FSAs, or sales force automation systems, part of the CRMs that automatically file each stage of a sales process, for the same kind of companies as ACT.
In the '90s, CRMs were consolidated as a business product, and the term, which grouped the most concepts despite the fact that many programs specialized in specific areas, prevailed. In 1993, three years after leaving Oracle, Tom Siebel founded Siebel, a company that became the world leader of CRMs, taking 45% of the market share. In principle, it was just SFA, but support and marketing quickly extended to the CRM.
07. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
Meanwhile, Marc Benioff, who had been a programmer at Apple and an important member of Oracle, left this last company and founded Salesforce in 1999, where he proposed a 100% cloud software with just the SFA functionality. During the first decade of the 21st century, the dot.com bubble expanded, and then burst in 2002, resulting in a shockwave in the IT sector, with hundreds of jobs lost through mergers and acquisitions. Microsoft purchased Great Plains in 2000, and in 2002, Great Plains acquired Navision, placing it very well in the CRM and ERP,
or enterprise resource planning, sector. Oracle took over Siebel in 2005. And meanwhile, the percentage of failed CRM implementations in companies was considerable, at 65% in 2002. At the end of the decade, Salesforce was leading the sector and the CRM cloud model with SFA had been launched on the market, once again, as was the case for Wordpress, due to its simplicity. This is when free software and open source programs finally appeared: Odoo (before Open ERP) in 2002, SugarCRM and vtiger CRM in 2004, CiviCRM in 2005 and Fat Free CRM in 2008.
07. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
This decade, with the leadership of Salesforce and its model, has seen the birth of Zurmo in 2011, which is committed to the gamification of CRM, of X2Engine CRM in the same year, and of EspoCRM in 2014. The competitive environment of the previous decade is still around, so free software just has to fight to become worthy, insisting on its advantages, delving into the dominant model and, in turn, innovating as only open source can.
07. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
The best free software CRMs SugarCRM The best known open source CRM system, and therefore, the most used, is unquestionably SugarCRM, and it has been the foundation for other similar systems. It's based on LAMP (LinuxApache-MySQL-PHP), but it also works in other platforms that offer PHP, such as Solaris, Windows and Mac OS X, and it
does almost all the functions that a company could need, including everything related to the customer, contract management and reports and analyses, support for mobile devices and marketing tools. There are two versions: a hosted version and a community version; the first
one has to be purchased and it's available in three packages with a free trial version that lasts a week; the community version can be downloaded and installed on the users' servers, and although it lacks certain features of the hosted version, it's still useful for small companies.
07. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
vtiger CRM vtiger CRM is based on SugarCRM and emerged as its fork, although it's branched to also look like the Salesforce tool in open source. It's not a first-line clone; it has the basic functions, such as automatic sales and inventory management, the customer
helpline, and analyses and reports, but it doesn't have certain task management, collaboration and third party integration features. vtiger CRM can be downloaded and installed on own servers, or users can opt
for the hosted version, which isn't free and is also available in trial version. It's a good choice for SMEs, and some of its packages work for smaller companies, which can be expanded with add-ons.
07. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
CiviCRM A very different proposal from the previous two is CiviCRM, which is a tool aimed at profitfree organizations and is also built to be integrated with the most famous CMSs, i.e., Joomla, Drupal and WordPress, meaning that the formations it uses can fully manage the image, activities and financial transactions on its website. It's useful for
managing donors and their contributions, organizing campaigns and overseeing fundraising. There's a demo available and the full CRM can be downloaded.
07. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
Fat Fre CRM The name Fat Free CRM is the most eloquent; it's a minimal but functional system. Its interface is very attractive and easy to use. It has plug-ins and its developers work with Ruby on Rails, an open source internet application framework, written in the Ruby
programming language, with the MVC, or Model View Controller architecture, which aims to combine simplicity with the development of real life applications in less source. In no way can it be compared with SugarCRM or vtiger CRM, but it has no problem working
for small companies and other institutions. There's only one version to download and install on an own server; there is no hosted version.
07. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
Zurmo Zurmo is maybe the most up to date CRM in terms of innovation, because its developers were determined to combine the customer relationship management system with gamification, i.e., using techniques, objects and dynamics from computer games in non-recreational operations to promote motivation and reinforce performance for achieving a goal, which "has become one of the best strategies for recruitment, retention and engagement, in both B2C and B2B environments for
marketing", according to the National Association for Gamification and Digital Marketing (ANAGRAM). Its developers, explained that Zurmo "uses gaming mechanics to award a user's use of the system and promote a more practical behavior", and the more areas they explore and handle, the more rewards they get. We're not just talking about a package with everything that companies and other organizations expect from a CRM, such as tracking the customer base and the sales
and submitting reports, it also awards and spurs on customers to enjoy using the system. It also has an online demonstration and offers a free trial of the hosted version. Since we're talking about open innovation, its source code is also available for anyone who wants to access it.
The Open Source Internet of Things:
platforms and applications for developers Development tools, hardware, smart home software, integration platforms, monitoring processes, operating systems‌
08
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the technological fields where strong growth is expected: 17 billion dollars by 2020, there times the current business volume. It is an expanding market, where more and more companies value the connectivity between devices and with the Net.
In fact, according to a survey conducted by Forrester Research, more than 80% of international companies believe that the Internet of Things is the most appealing field for their interests over the next decade. And what is probably more important: 25% of those companies are already implementing IoT solutions.
According to Gartner, growth is unstoppable: the consultancy firm estimates that in 2020 there will be 25 billion connected devices, 30 time more than in 2009. It forecasts that in 2015 there will be 4.9 billion IoT devices, 30% more than in 2014. This intends to be a list of some of the best known open source platforms on the market, divided into the different fields of activity:
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
Hardware and software development tools
1. Node-RED: Node-RED is a simple, open source visualization tool that connects devices for the Internet of Things. Developed by the Emerging Technology department of IBM, the tool enables a piece of hardware, an API or on online service to be connected. Node-RED provides a user-friendly interface for developers to connect devices easily and quickly. Node-RED has been developed in node.js, a server-side JavaScript platform widely used in IoT projects, and can be run in the cloud.
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
It is also a tool that enables the deployment of new nodes for connecting more devices or services without any problems. It is a scalable solution. The entire project is available in GitHub under an Apache version 2.0 license.
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
Node-RED could be used, for instance, to create a chat application using the Bluemix, environment, IBM's cloud platform for building, managing and running all kinds of applications. If you are a developer and are interested in using Node-RED to create a chat app, read this tutorial. This is an example of the HTML page's structure, which contains a <div> that receives the chat messages and a footer with the send fields. The entire data handling process is done through the JavaScript language.
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
2. Kinoma Create: Kinoma Create is a construction kit that enables connections between devices without the need for having too much knowledge of programming in JavaScript. Kinoma Create already has everything needed to start developing small IoT projects. Its main components are: •
A touchscreen.
•
128 MB RAM and 16 MB flash memory.
•
An ARM SoC 800 MHz processor.
•
A microSD card slot.
•
Bluetooth and WiFi wireless connection.
•
Loudspeaker and microphone.
•
Several ports for connecting peripherals, including a USB 2.0 port.
•
Linux distribution.
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
Kinoma Create can be used for all kinds of projects: you can connect temperature, light or motion sensors for a specific purpose and receive notices on the cellphone when there is a change. And you can also change the light or temperature conditions from your own device.
See video
On the Kinoma Create website there are many tutorials on the practical applications of this technology, with access to the development code uploaded in GitHub: with Kinoma Create you can create a synthesizer (Kinoma provides the open code for developing the user interface), a camera trap (it takes pictures if an animal or object stands in the way of the laser beam) or an automatic alarm-bell that goes off to alert us of a situation.
See video
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
3. Eclipse IoT: Eclipse IoT is an open source platform that enables Internet of Things applications to be developed in Java. It provides a set of open source technologies for connecting and managing several devices in an IoT environment.
protocol), CoAP (a protocol for simple connection of devices to the Internet) and Lightweight M2M (a server-client communication protocol that enables data transmission or the administration of sensors or cellphones).
It also supports some of the fundamental open standards for any Internet of Things solution: MQTT (a machine-to-machine connection
Eclipse IoT offers gateway services for the Internet of Things to help developers handle both IoT applications and devices.
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
Within this platform programmers have the Kura development framework, based on Java, and OSGi, that implements services as important as: •
Connectivity administration in the cloud.
•
WiFi network configuration.
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Support for protocols for connection between devices and servers.
•
Remote application and device configuration and administration.
Kura is not the only project or the only framework that enables the development of Eclipse IoT. There are also other interesting initiatives: •
•
Mihini: An open code development framework based on Linux. It provides an API for developing machine-to-machine applications with a very short learning curve. Developments with Mihini use Lua as the programming language. OM2M: Implements the SmartM2M standard. It provides an M2M service platform for developing independent services that enable the deployment of vertical applications and
different types of devices. It has a REST API for machine authentication, application registration, asynchronous communications, access management… •
Eclipse SCADA: A set of tools that provides libraries for developing both front-end and back-end projects, an application interface… It is a scalable and completely customizable solution.
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
Smart home software
4. OpenHUB: As homes are packed with more and more devices, there is a greater need to connect them to enjoy a true smart home experience. OpenHUB provides a platform for integrating devices that, for obvious reasons, speak and communicate in completely different ‘languages’. How does it achieve this? Through automation processes and user interface units. •
It can run on any device capable of running a Java Virtual Machine under a Linux, Mac or Windows operating system.
•
Rules engine to meet automation needs.
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Several native user interfaces.
•
Open code solution.
•
Continuous improvement through its community.
•
It has APIs for integrating with other systems or platforms.
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
Information exchange between applications and devices
5. IoTSyS: IoTSyS provides a device communication system based on IPv6, 6LoWPAN, Constrained Application Protocol and Efficient XML Interchange protocols and standards. Its aim is to provide interoperable interfaces that enable connection between devices, for example, sensor systems. The platform originated within the framework of the IoT6 European research project and is maintained by the Automation Systems Group of the Vienna University of Technology. Its utilities are diverse: connecting light and motion sensors on a blind, air conditioning systems, acoustic alarmâ&#x20AC;Ś
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
See video – Demo 2
See video – Demo 3
See video – Demo 4
Demo 2
Demo 3
Demo 4
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
Operating systems
6. Contiki: Contiki is an open code operating system for Internet of Things systems. It enables the connection of 8-bit computer systems or systems integrated on microcontrollers, including sensor network nodes. It is used for noise monitoring, electric power measurement, alarm systems, home automation, remote surveillance… It is based on protocols and standards such as IPv4, IPv6, 6lowpan, RPL and CoAP. Its features are: •
Execution protothreads.
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TCP/IP connectivity.
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Web browser.
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Multi-task kernel.
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Web server.
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Remote client using VNC (Virtual Network Computing).
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
7. RIOT:
8. TinyOS:
It is defined by its creators as â&#x20AC;&#x153;the user-friendly operating system for the Internet of Thingsâ&#x20AC;?. RIOT is based on a microkernel architecture. It runs on 8, 16 and 32-bit hardware and, through a native port, in both Linux and Mac OS environments. It enables application development through standard programming in C and C++ languages. It is offered under an LGPL license.
TinyOS is an open source operating system for wireless sensor networks. It is written in the nesC programming language, a dialect of the C syntax optimized to avoid the problems derived from the memory limitations existing in sensor networks. TinyOS is a joint project by the University of California, Berkeley and Intel. There are tools and libraries in C and Java that increase its functionality and opportunities for use.
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
9. Brillo: Brillo, Google's open code operating system for connecting wearables on the Internet of Things, is based on the Weave communication language, a common system that would enable all devices to speak and communicate in the same ‘language’. In this case it would not be necessary for the devices to run with Android. Google's aim with Brillo and Weave is to create a true Internet of Things, where each and every device can actually be connected: household appliances, sensor networks, mobile or electric devices…
See vídeo
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
Integration platforms and tools
10. Nimbits: Nimbits is a PaaS data registration platform for connecting sensors in the cloud. This open code service enables connection to socials networks such as Facebook or Twitter, to databases, to the WolframAlpha computational knowledge engine… Some of its basic features are: •
It uses the Spring development framework.
•
It has a REST API.
•
Data can be uploaded and downloaded in CSV format.
09 The best free software resources for internet sales
We all know that e-commerce consists of the purchase, sale, distribution, marketing and supplying of information for products and services via electronic means such as the internet.
09. THE BEST FREE SOFTWARE RESOURCES
However, what's maybe not as well know are the four different types of this commerce: •
B2C (business-to-consumer), when companies sell to the public;
•
B2B (business-to-business), when companies do business amongst themselves;
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B2G (business-to-government), when companies sell to government organizations;
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C2C (consumer-to-consumer), on the platform used by consumers to trade between themselves.
This economic activity has some very specific features and huge advantages for companies that use it. It's ubiquitous, interactive, personalized and rich in formats, and has a global reach, universal standards, a wealth of information at low cost and a social technology with which users generate content. Companies also expand their customer base potential and enter a broader, and even more remote, market, the opening times are 24/7 and the asynchronous dialogue makes customers loyal, drastically reduces sales costs, improves distribution and communication with the customer base and optimizes the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, thus generating a competitive advantage. This advantage, added to that of the fast development of open source e-commerce platforms, as seen in other cases, is double.
09. THE BEST FREE SOFTWARE RESOURCES
Essential times in the evolution of e-commerce The history of e-commerce is longer than it may seem. It began in the first years of the internet and has grown exponentially with the passing
of time, becoming a multimillion dollar business that already forms part of the everyday lives of millions and millions of people.
Electronic Data Interchange invented EDI in 1960, which was a system that gave companies the opportunity to make electronic transactions and exchange business information. Ten years later, although computers as we now know them didn't exist, the first business relationships appeared that used computers to transfer data. It was English businessman, Michael Aldrich, who invented online shopping in 1979, giving rise to business transactions over the internet.
09. THE BEST FREE SOFTWARE RESOURCES
In 1981 we had the first B2B e-commerce system with the travel agency Thompson Holidays and the first banks with online services; in 1984 the first B2C e-commerce system appeared and the first purchase was made; and a decade after Aldrich's invention, the World Wide Web, by another Englishman, Tim Berners-Lee, gave global e-commerce an incalculable push; so much so that in 1991, NSF (National Science Foundation) allowed the internet to be used for business purposes and in 1994 Netscape implemented the SSL protocol, guaranteeing data exchange security.
But before the latter, in 1992, the shop Book Stacks Unlimited developed an ecommerce that accepted the use of bank cards as a means of payment, and in 1994, systems emerged for paying third parties with bank cards
and Pizza Hut accepted internet orders. Amazon and AuctionWeb (which later became eBay) were founded in 1995, and Paypal one year later. Retail broke onto the internet scene in 1999.
09. THE BEST FREE SOFTWARE RESOURCES
Two years later, Amazon launched the first m-commerce, or mobile commerce, platform, for making purchases from mobile devices. In 2002, CSN Stores and NetShops studied the market segments to sell online. In 2005, Bazaarvoice created a platform to show the values of internet companies. And lastly, before Apple launched the App Store and Groupon arrived in 2008, and bitcoin, the virtual currency, in 2009 (although a bit late), Prestashop was launched in 2007 and Magento in 2008, two platforms with open source. That's how free software reached e-commerce.
09. THE BEST FREE SOFTWARE RESOURCES
The most interesting open source platforms for e-commerce Magento is the real diva. It has a modular architecture, great flexibility and control over the virtual store, a visually attractive design, website traffic analysis and sales reports, the Google Website Optimizer, a tool for optimizing websites, and others for SEO positioning, a great order processing, responsive templates for adapting to mobile devices, the creation of promotional and discount coupons, a newsletter, and the
possibility of managing several stores from the same administration panel. It's quick, and thanks to its scalable model, it specializes in medium or large retailers. However, it loses points for its installation and very complete control panel, which makes its customization rather complicated.
09. THE BEST FREE SOFTWARE RESOURCES
VirtueMart, VirtueMart, written in PHP and requiring MySQL, is not a specific product for developing virtual stores, rather it works with the content management system Joomla. This is considered to be an advantage, given that the possibility of adding a series of CMS elements to the sales platform makes it more versatile. It's simple and takes advantage of the flexibility and strength of Joomla, and is easy to update,
although this flexibility doesn't reach the use of functionalities that can only be used with plugins. Meanwhile, we mustn't lose sight of the fact that CMS as Wordpress has plugins such as WooCommerce, WP e-Commerce and Jigoshop for integrating e-commerce tools into a website designed with this content platform.
09. THE BEST FREE SOFTWARE RESOURCES
The old OsCommerce open source software is still highly used for e-commerce, although it's now somewhat obsolete compared to the others, which have evolved. It's used for managing virtual stores in different languages and for ordering products, its categories and client list, it has a very advanced delivery method, transactions in all currencies and sells both physical products and digital downloads. As a payment system, it accepts PayPal, 2Checkout, Authorize.net, PsiGate, SECPay, iPayment, NOCHEX, credit cards, payment upon delivery, bank transfers and checks.
Installation is simple and there is supposedly a large community of developers, which makes its obsolescence somewhat incomprehensible, unless it's come to a standstill. Block modifications must be done manually because OsCommerce barely takes the CSS into account. Any small change makes PHP knowledge a must and it has a multitude of bugs and security errors.
09. THE BEST FREE SOFTWARE RESOURCES
The OpenCart control panel has a very good design, simple and intuitive: after installing the software on the server, the user just needs to choose a template, whichever one best suits the business, and add any kind of products to begin selling. The pages it generates are optimized by search engines, and it's possible to check out without registering or a guest checkout.
For payment modules, OpenCart has gateways for PayPal, 2Checkout, Authorize.Net, LiqPay, Moneybookers, WorldPay, SagePay, eWay, PayPoint, AlertPay and Paymate, bank transfer, payment on delivery and check. It's useful for SMEs due to its flexibility, high customization and total lack of technical complications. It provides free support and updates.
09. THE BEST FREE SOFTWARE RESOURCES
Prestashop is the second most popular ecommerce platform after Magento, although it doesn't take second place among the most used. Its used by numerous big brands for their virtual stores. It contains dozens of functionalities in 38 languages with which, for example, it's possible to sell physical and downloadable products, issue invoices, track products that have been sold, make offers and give discounts, import CSV files,
enter barcodes, stipulate the metatags for all the store's pages, export products to eBay, implement subsidiary programs and allow comments from the customer base. Prestashop's simplified and friendly URL addresses favors SEO positioning in search engines and has responsive templates and integrated payment modules for Paypal, Google Checkout and MoneyBookers and Google Checkout, but also for bank transfers and checks.
09. THE BEST FREE SOFTWARE RESOURCES
Zen Cart uses PHP and MySQL and is distributed free of charge with a GPL license. It was developed with the invaluable guidance from retailers and programmers with experience selling items on the internet. It's possible to find
collaborations that improve the different versions that exist in certain forums, and it's precisely these collaborations that made Zen Cart one of the most used e-commerce applications.
10 The profitability
of free software companies Doubts about the profitability of companies specializing in free software don't only make no sense in light of the data we have available, but also because it's obvious that they're based on wrong ideas and pure and simple ignorance.
10. THE PROFITABILITY
And although it seems counterintuitive that a community software model is capable of being the foundation of a strong and profitable industry, the financial success stories in this sector keep multiplying.
Free software stopped being a thing of crazy programmers when companies realized that purchasing licenses that cost millions from Oracle or Microsoft increased expenditure and their dependence on these companies. In exchange, free software could offer similar tools and, somewhat important, better scalability. The value of the innovation that this technology is able to accumulate results in this development model being useful for coordinating and stimulating the developers to produce secure, solid and customizable platforms on which to cement services that pique confidence and attract investors and customers. Open source hasn't just perfectly adapted to the cloud computing trend, but its profit has grown exponentially alongside it.
10. THE PROFITABILITY
This technology has increased its business implementation, and with it, companies that have based themselves on it have prospered, whilst they no longer depend on a community of usersprogrammers, but rather they develop their own products. Two very clear examples of the success of companies specialized in free software are Red Hat, who, since 1993, has developed one of the best liked GNU/Linux operating system distributions of its time, and Canonical. If there is one company that has proven in recent years how profitable free software and the freemium revenue model can be, it's Red Hat When it went public, its shares had the eighth
highest profit on the first day in the history of Wall Street. And although it was significantly affected by the 2002 dotcom crisis, its profits in 2011 reached 100 million dollars for the first time. Therefore, common sense should dismiss the idea that there couldn't be open source companies like Red Hat, capable of earning more than 1 billion dollars by providing free products. Canonical, focused on computer software with Ubuntu and a service provision business model, has made a position for itself thanks to the demand for this provision-related free software product, and every year the difference between its profits and losses reduces, putting it on track to be just as profitable as Red Hat, which will no doubt occur in the not too distant future.
10. THE PROFITABILITY
How free software companies earn money In a world where money moves mountains, it makes sense that open source wouldn't be so popular without cash involved, especially taking into account that companies need income to survive. And that's how free software companies do it: Thanks to investments from people with large amounts of financial resources who are fascinated with the field of technology, or they think of themselves as philanthropists, or because they want to buy influence in this sector, there are open source companies who
survive, and even run extremely successfully. What's more, technological projects have the highest success rates on any crowdfunding platform, and normally get the funding they need to get set up.
10. THE PROFITABILITY
However, this revenue doesn't come directly from companies' economic activity, so luckily they have other sources of capital such as double license, or freemium, which offers one free trial version and another that costs money, with the hope that their customer base will try the free version and like it so much that they decide to update to the special paid version to obtain additional functionalities and tools which they would otherwise not get. There are many cases where free programs are distributed at no cost, but other cases where the distribution has a price, and sometimes very high at that. Although it's normally possible to obtain
both versions of the program from different sources, besides the cost, the program is free because users are free to use it as they wish: charging to distribute the software doesn't imply that it's any less free. Meanwhile, payment support also provides fresh money to free software companies, since the time generally comes that
an IT product will have some kind of fault, and the user has to call technical support and pay for it. Or for periodic maintenance services.
10. THE PROFITABILITY
Furthermore, certain open companies have gone back to using subscription based support, where customers use the software for free, but must pay the technicians to help make sure that the equipment is working properly. There are other free software companies who charge for advising about the choice of applications and even to develop customized
applications based on their own free applications. There is also competition in the free software arena, and some companies decide to release software and platforms in the open source platform to take a
larger share than their competition, which results in indirect revenue from the expansion.
10. THE PROFITABILITY
With regard to doubts about their profitability... Despite everything we've discussed, many people wouldn't invest a single euro in this technology because they don't expect to recover it. And when Juan Julián Merelo is asked what he would say to those who think that companies dedicated to free software can't be profitable, he emphatically responds:
“
They just need to inform themselves. There are large companies whose core business is free software, such as Red Hat and Canonical. And also small companies. The license sales model is taking up a smaller share of the market, and in a service or software sales model, such as service or data-based, free software has many more advantages than proprietary software
“
Juan Julián Merelo
10. THE PROFITABILITY
When asked such a pertinent question, Ramón Ramón insists that "free software is not a synonym of gratuity. There are thousands of free software companies in the world, and many of them are generating large profit, jobs, wealth, etc. The clearest example could be that of Red Hat", said Merelo, "a large multinational that generates gains. What's more, Google wouldn't be what it is today if it weren't for free software". David Úbeda delved deeper into Ramón's last comment: "I would ask them [those who think that free software isn't profitable] if they think that companies such as IBM and Google, with products such as
Android, based on the Linux kernel, released to the community aren't profitable. Maybe those people don't know about the business models that could be formed around free software. There is a lack of training on the matter, and companies also need to put more trust in the community of developers and in their product".
It seems like the three specialist are very clear that, if it was possible, not only would they have no problem to invest in free software, but they would do so very happily.
An idea of the present and a look to the future
11
It seems that free software has a promising future. However, to form some idea about what it could actually be like before it takes over, there's nothing better than analyzing the present and consulting our specialists on this technology, since they have been studying and dedicating themselves to it for years.
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
The present times of free software in Spain Perhaps the budgetary savings argument is the most important for implementing free software in Public Administrations, although Juan JuliĂĄn Merelo doesn't like to use it: "As if it's that easy to one day stop paying licenses and the next day everyone is being productive using the corresponding free software. In general, it's not like that. The Administration has to invest in training and in software development to be able to implement successful solutions, as we have seen, for example, in Zaragoza, or in the administration of the University of Cordoba or Murcia. That's why, as far as I'm concerned, the most important argument is budgetary freedom: once the free software has been implemented, you free up a budgetary item that you can use for whatever you want: ITC or any other area. You don't have to block off a part of the budget to pay for licenses year after year, with an increasing risk of arbitrary rises, as has happened more than once (and will keep happening)â&#x20AC;?.
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
Meanwhile, Ram贸n Ram贸n thinks that "It's a solid and very helpful argument, but I don't think that there will be savings in the short-term, and sometimes the cost will even go up. Nevertheless, this doesn't take away from the fact that there are significant economic benefits: the main thing is that the fate of the economic effort is changed; it goes from being royalty payments or use rights and brokering of any company to hiring professionals and companies in the region.
"It also generates much, much wealth, even though people who defend proprietary software say otherwise: the software that really generates money is proprietary. "However, in my humble opinion, and equally important, is that technological sovereignty has become the main wager in many Latin American countries. They are the representatives chosen by the people who have control over technology and, thus, of their country, and we're not talking about transnationals or the intelligence services of third countries.
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
What's worse is when the multinationals that have spent years bleeding countries and administrations dry declare technological neutrality. Technological sovereignty is the result of freedom".
teaches a group of students a mathematical algorithm with proprietary software: would it make sense if the students could only implement the algorithm with a certain software? Certainly not.
David Ă&#x161;beda thinks that the budgetary savings argument probably "has a significant influence on implementation, and even more so nowadays. However, it should never be the strongest argument. To explain it, I'll use a pretty common example used in education, when a teacher
They should learn the algorithm and have the freedom to implement it with any software that allows it. These students will have been taught knowledge, concepts and procedures, but they must respect the fact that the IT implementation of the algorithm to resolve a problem could be
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
resolved using any software, and since teaching is public education, the most logical would be for this software to be free, whenever possible. Another thing would be if there wasn't free software to work with a specific material". Taking advantage of the fact that Úbeda has brought up the field of education awakens curiosity about how establishing free software in Spanish education would change things of it evolves favorably. Merelo focuses on higher education, although he doesn't see any clear trends: "Although, unfortunately, proprietary tools are still widely used, it's true that certain trends such as computation in the cloud or data science, which is exclusively based on free software, helps to expand this technology. At least initiatives such as free software offices are emerging, meaning that people are made aware of and use it more, and in some cases, such as that of the University of Miguel Hernández or Zaragoza, or the coordinator of free software offices in Galicia, and they're doing a great job.”
Ramón is categorical; the implementation of free software in education is not evolving very favorably: "Firstly due to the constant attacks from corrupt and inept politicians; the clearest example occurred not long ago: Extremadura and its
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
schools were sold out by a caretaker government to transnational oppression. And secondly, because there are many teachers who don't want to innovate, they don't want to open their minds and prefer to indoctrinate and enslave future generations instead of making a minimum effort to learn new technologiesâ&#x20AC;?. In this case, Ă&#x161;beda thinks that "if these irrational cuts in education have brought about any positivity, it's that people have had to reinvent teaching because, among many other things, costly computers and licenses can't be purchased or renewed. Fortunately, in Spain we have great teachers who have known how to turn
things around to adapt to these difficult times. Of course, this has meant that teachers have had to adapt quickly to this situation, and therefore, its implementation [that of free software] has
evolved faster. It's also true that we have all had to learn to make a greater rationalization of public expenditure than before. This should be a lesson that we should never forget.
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
However, there is still a long way to go in the field of education. We need to remember that many students used GNU/Linux distributions in their preuniversity stages in their respective Autonomous Communities (take a look at
Lliurex in the Autonomous Community of Valencia) and when they go to university that have classrooms with Microsoft IT systems". There is definitely a long way to go in the field of free software. Now it would be very interesting to know what they think about the initiatives that have been launched for
the use of free software in the Public administration and whether a specific and detailed section needs to be approved in the legislation to ensure its implementation. Merelo doesn't seem to be very convinced: "What initiatives? I've heard about municipalities such as Zaragoza, which are migrating free software, councils such as Granada, which has a rather advanced distro implementation program, but the truth is that I haven't heard of any initiative in the General State Administration.
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
"In fact, there are general initiatives ranging from something as obvious as not mentioning a specific brand when purchasing an application, and they generally manage to find a way to avoid them, to the National Interoperability Framework Observatory, (NIFO), which recommends using open standards for documents and such. Even so, I still have to use a computer with Windows almost exclusively to sign documents from the administration. "So I guess that in general the short answer is that the initiatives I know of (although there may be initiatives that I don't know about) are insufficient". Like Merelo, Ram贸n also feels that there is a need for "more effort in these times of turmoil. I remember that the more people talked about the crisis in Spain, the more friends from other countries asked me how it was possible that our government has the solution in front of them and they didn't take advantage of it. To fight cuts, more free software and less neutrality.
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
Free software is the answer to fighting corruption. It's a commitment to democracy. Úbeda thinks that establishing free software in Spanish education will come about on its own: "It won't stand up to scrutiny. But first we need to make users and workers aware
“
In Public Administrations it's complicated to coordinate these types of initiatives internally, so image approving a national legislation. We also have a handicap we have to fight against and beat, which is the refusal to leave the comfort zone with respect to the software or system we use
Úbeda of the benefits of using free software in the Public Administration. If the majority of people don't believe in it, it will be difficult to successfully approve a legislation. Furthermore, an error in its implementation could lead to a dismal failure that could be difficult to recover from". Forgetting about the comfort zone, do you think that there is a long way to go for free
“
"Why doesn't the administration use free software? And if being committed to free software means being committed to ending corruption, being more transparent, having a greater democracy, generating quality employment, and being committed to our companies and future generations, it's definitely a State matter, but I'm afraid that our government doesn't see it like that".
software to reach its full potential in the world? What countries should Spain learn from? Merelo doesn't think that we need to learn from anyone, although that doesn't mean to say that we're the masters. Initiatives such as Linex or the free software offices in universities are pretty unique. Issues such as the transparency law, although not perfect, go a step beyond legislation in many countries.
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
And there is a community of active and enthusiastic users and developers. "But there's a long way to go. In general, the Administration ignores initiatives that come from below from user groups that have little continuity, although it is true that there is a good level of communication between all the free initiatives that range from hacktivism to comprehensive cooperatives and time banks, passing through free networks and open data communities. If I focus on university and education, which is my business, there is still a long way to go, and I'm not talking this time about free software, but about the freedom of
software as a good practice. It's illogical that at university, where they don't generally tell you that you have to study a subject using just one book, they force you to use a single application or programming language. Eventually, free software offices and user groups must evolve into mutual interest groups (for example, users of a program or language) rather than advocacy communities, meaning that the ideas of free software are adopted as best practice by Administrations. But I'm afraid that there is still a long way to go".
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
Ramón agrees: "Yes, there's still a lot to do. Spain was once a power. But nowadays it's very regulated. Learning about different fields from countries such as Brazil, Ecuador and France would be highly recommendable".
And Úbeda insists on the same idea: "There's a long way to go, but the important thing is that we're on the right track. It's difficult to change everything that's bad from one day to the next, since every country has a different political, social, cultural and economic situation".
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
The future of free software Having asked Merelo about how he sees the future of free software and how he expects this technology to develop and its expansion in coming years, he says that he has no idea, that he left his crystal ball in his other pants; but in the end he goes out on a limb: "There's a trend lately to change from strong licenses such as GPL to more permissive licenses such
as Apache or MIT. I don't know if this trend will grow or if it could take a less pleasant course. There's also a trend to use and develop tool ecosystems: there's talk about the Full-Stack DevOps, which is going to make things rather complicated: we're going to have to learn about and control a pretty wide range of tools, one of which may have
to be JavaScript, as well as the Git. It's difficult to predict the future for the rest. A while ago I found out that there are two JavaScript construction tools that I'd never heard about before. We all know the joke: "The days that have passed without a new MVC framework coming out in Javascript". Now Perl 5 will give way to 6, Python 2 to 3, etc.
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
It's possible that free software becomes increasingly more mainstream, but with the pass from desktop computers to the kingdom of tablets, and from there to wearables, I don't know what the hell is going to happen. What is clear is that with free software, and IT in general, we have to learn new things every week, if that's possible to do without forgetting what you already knew". And to top it off, he says sarcastically "With the exception of C ++, because there's no problem at all if you forget about that". Ramón, on the other hand, sees the future of free software "much slower than fans of technological freedom would
like. The interests against technological evolution are known: the sector always resists evolving and, in cahoots with corrupt politicians, inept technicians and the great machinery that is communication and marketing, it makes this David vs. Goliath task progress too slowly. Even so, there are reasons to have hope, and the most obvious example of that is Big Data and all, or most, of the mature and professional solutions are in free software". Úbeda sees a very positive future for free software: "I think that the foundations are being laid in education for our graduates to enter the market with open culture, and this will
help to change to mentality of companies who still don't trust this type of technology developed by the community". Let's hope that his words are a prophecy that will be fulfilled soon.
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